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MIAMI - Former Playboy Playmate and oil tycoon's widow Anna Nicole Smith has died at the age of 39 after apparently collapsing in a Florida hotel room, her lawyer said today.
"I can confirm that she is deceased. It's as shocking to me as to you guys," Smith's attorney, Ronald Rale, told Reuters. "I don't know anything further. (Her lawyer and husband) Howard (K. Stern) obviously is speechless and grieving."
Smith was found in her hotel room and given CPR by Seminole tribal fire rescue and Hollywood fire rescue workers, said Michael Bloom, president of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida.
Smith's nurse called hotel workers at the hotel at 1.38 pm local time (7.38am NZT) and security went to the hotel room, hotel officials said. Fire rescue workers from both the Seminole Indian tribe and from Hollywood arrived minutes later and Smith was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood at 2.10 pm (8.10am NZT).
Smith had been ordered to have her five-month-old baby girl undergo a paternity test as part of a lawsuit by an ex-boyfriend, Larry Birkhead. Birkhead sued Smith in October, demanding she have the paternity test because he believed he was the father of the girl.
Smith had said her lawyer, Howard K. Stern, is the father of the baby.
The crazy world of Anna Nicole Smith
* Smith's 20-year-old son, Daniel, died in the Bahamas three days after the birth of her daughter. A pathologist hired by the model said he apparently died from a drug overdose.
* Smith was Playboy's Playmate of the Year in 1993. In 1994, she married 89-year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall after meeting him at a strip club.
* Marshall's death 14 months later set off a legal battle over his estate between Smith and her husband's son, E. Pierce Marshall, who died in June.
* In May, Anna Nicole won a US Supreme Court decision in the suit giving her another chance to collect millions of dollars.
* She starred in a short-lived cable television reality series, The Anna Nicole Show, from 2002 to 2004.
- REUTERS
